


new growth

by Snickfic



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Desert, Established Relationship, Gardens & Gardening, M/M, Mpreg, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 00:47:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29725752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/pseuds/Snickfic
Summary: “What if I were growing more than just plant matter here?” Loki asked, in a light, casual tone that put Heimdall instantly on his guard.Heimdall considered the question carefully, from as many angles as he could think of, but the result was not illuminating. “Such as?”
Relationships: Heimdall/Loki (Marvel)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 46





	new growth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Unforgotten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unforgotten/gifts).



> Written for Unforgotten, who requested "Heimdall/Loki mpreg in New Mexico." I hope you enjoy. <3333

“Here you are,” Heimdall said to Loki, seated in the middle of New Asgard’s gardens. He was often to be found there these days, digging little irrigation furrows around an agave plant or scowling at a prickly pear cactus that had just stuck his finger. He seemed to enjoy the quiet. Heimdall sometimes wondered if Loki found a certain kinship with the cactus, prickly and oft-scorned.

Loki pushed to his feet. He dressed in the clothes of this realm now, as they all did. Today it was boots—to guard against snakes, as though Loki had anything to fear from those—and dark-washed jeans and a billowing, long-sleeved shirt of pristine white. His dark hair was pulled back in a plait down his back. “Are you so surprised to find me here?” he asked.” You, who see everything?” There was a hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. Prickles he might have, but they didn’t sting as they used to.

“I’m surprised because I wasn’t looking for you,” Heimdall said. “I was watching the shadow of the bluff recede as the sun rose, and then somehow my attention was drawn here.”

“Very curious,” Loki said, straight-faced.

“I wonder, what might there be here that requires my attention?”

“What indeed,” Loki said. He gave Heimdall a sly, sideways glance, the sort that suggested they discuss the matter somewhere in the shade, such as a bedroom. He shifted closer until there was nothing for Heimdall to do but slip his arm around Loki’s waist. Loki leaned closer still—an impossible thing to imagine a year ago, that he’d invite touch so readily, much less where others might see.

“What if I were growing more than just plant matter here?” Loki asked, in a light, casual tone that put Heimdall instantly on his guard. It occurred to him that, positioned this way, Loki couldn’t see his face, and Heimdall couldn’t have seen Loki’s either if Heimdall were any other than himself. 

He did Loki the courtesy of not looking. He considered the question carefully, from as many angles as he could think of, but the result was not illuminating. “Such as?”

“Something you planted, perhaps.”

“Oh?” Heimdall said blankly.

Loki took a deep breath. “We do call it seed, after all.”

For a moment, Heimdall was struck dumb. Surely Loki didn’t mean what Heimdall had taken him to mean. Yet Heimdall couldn’t think what he meant instead. “Loki,” he said at least, the beginning of a question he didn’t know how to ask.

Lightly, as if it were no matter, Loki said, “You may look for yourself, if you do not believe me,” though Heimdall had said nothing of the sort.

There was always a risk to accepting Loki’s offers—for example, the one that had first brought them to bed months ago—but this time Heimdall didn’t hesitate. He looked within Loki and almost immediately found what Loki had hinted at, a tiny, monstrous-looking, beautiful little being, glowing with vitality and magic.

Loki’s face was still bent toward the dry desert earth. Heimdall said, “How do you suppose it happened?”

Loki shrugged. He stepped out of Heimdall’s arms and looked at the ocotillo at his feet, stretching its long, spindly arms towards the sky. “The same way this garden happened, I imagine.”

No one had planned a garden here. No one had selected seedlings or buried them in the earth, and yet in the first months of New Asgard, all around the borders of the settlement, ocotillo and cactus and spiny cane cholla had sprouted from the earth where there had been none, just as children had sprouted in wombs at an unlikely rate. Those two events together were how they’d all learned that Thor was the god of fertility as well as thunder.

It was as good an explanation for Loki’s pregnancy as any. For a moment, Heimdall had half-wondered if Loki had engineered it himself, but looking at him now, he thought not. Loki would have been gleeful about it, would have crowed his success to the heavens. He would not refuse to meet Heimdall’s eye.

“There is the question of what to do with it,” Loki said. 

“Ah.” Heimdall breathed that thought in, held it for a moment, and breathed it out again. “That is of course your decision.”

“I assume you have some preference, however.”

Heimdall did not need to look this time; he saw the child-sprout as clearly in his memory as if he were looking at still. He cleared his throat. “I would not burden you with it,” he said.

“By the nine, Heimdall,” Loki snapped, “express an opinion for once.”

Slowly, Heimdall said, “Then I wish to keep it, if you insist on knowing.” He was sure of his answer; he was uncertain if it was the right one. 

Then he thought it must have been, because Loki looked down and palmed his belly—still flat and apparently unremarkable, showing no sign of the new processes working furiously within, and yet the sight stirred a longing in Heimdall that he hadn’t guessed until a few minutes ago was even there to be stirred. “But what kind of parents could we be?” Loki asked.

“The usual kind, I believe,” Heimdall said. He dared to venture closer and cover Loki’s hand with his own. “Entirely out of our depth but full of love, surrounded by good people who know better than we do and will help us.”

Loki turned to look him in the eye at last, and Heimdall saw there what he had only guessed before: Loki wanted this child desperately and wasn’t sure he could have it.

“Loki,” Heimdall said. 

Loki searched his gaze as sharply and thoroughly as Heimdall had ever looked at anything in all his days. Finally, coming to a decision, he pressed close and kissed Heimdall. Heimdall cupped Loki’s jaw; Loki breathed shakily into Heimdall’s mouth. Eventually Loki took his mouth away and instead pressed his forehead to Heimdall’s. He gripped the sides of Heimdall’s shirt. Together they breathed the desert morning in.

“A child,” Loki said at last.

“If you wish it.”

“You know I do, even though it—it seems very foolish.”

“Then we are both fools,” Heimdall said. Loki huffed softly. Heartened, Heimdall added, “And I’ll have you know, I express opinions quite often.”

“Do you,” Loki said.

“For example, it is my opinion that you should end your labors here for the moment and return to bed, so that you can rest. I’ll even join you.”

“ _Will_ you,” Loki said, smile evident in his voice. “Yes, I see your point.” 

He made no move towards their cabin, however. He turned and angled into Heimdall’s side, so that Heimdall’s arm fell around his shoulders. Heimdall followed his gaze over the tops of cactus to New Asgard, just now waking. Under the morning sun, the desert of this new land stretched out golden and pink all the way to the horizon.

[end]


End file.
